Not all of us have Mounce's book (mine's in storage), so it's really hard to react to what Mounce says unless you quote it. (In fact, the way the issue is set forth suggests that something is garbled.)

Also, Mounce's book is an introductory primer. Its grammatical explanations are not really appropriate for analyzing rather fine distinctions in a verse that has been and continues to be particularly fraught with theological implications (which are beyond the scope of this forum).

Stephen Carlson wrote:Not all of us have Mounce's book (mine's in storage),

I pulled mine out of storage (Book Shelf)

so it's really hard to react to what Mounce says unless you quote it. (In fact, the way the issue is set forth suggests that something is garbled.)

Not sure what is garbled.

Also, Mounce's book is an introductory primer.

I am quite aware of that. Yet it is a usable tool from time to time.

Its grammatical explanations are not really appropriate for analyzing rather fine distinctions in a verse that has been and continues to be particularly fraught with theological implications (which are beyond the scope of this forum).

I agree.

So let do it this way, "Can the predicate Nominative function adjectivally"?

Why is this query posted in the subcategory "Vocabulary"? It's not a question about vocabulary but rather about grammatical usage. You're not asking about the meaning of the word θεὸς in John 1:1c but rather about how it is used in this particular instance, and you're asking about it as if it were a matter of standard usage such as might readily be raised in a first-year grammar book. "Qualitative verses adjectival"? I suppose that you mean "qualitative versus adjectival." But "qualitative" and "adjectival" are hardly antithetical. Ordinarily adjectives are qualitative. Now the question is whether a Predicate nominative is or can be adjectival -- but, of course it can: there's hardly a more standard ordinary formulation than something like "ἕρυθρόν ἐστι τὸ πρόσωπον τοῦ φίλου ἡμῶν." But you seem to mean to ask whether a predicate noun can be qualitative, and you ask this as if it were a generalizing query when in fact you want to know about a specific instance: θεὸν in John 1:1c. It's pretty clear that you're raising a theological question here about a specific verse. We don't deal with theological questions or theological implications here but with questions that can be dealt with in terms of what we know of how the Biblical Greek language works. The questions you're raising have been discussed over and over in the old B-Greek list that pre-dated this Forum. Access a search box at:

and type in "John 1:1c" or "QEOS" or "QEOS HN hO LOGOS" -- you'll find page after page of references to earlier discussions of this passage from the old B-Greek archives. There were several discussions of it in 2006.

For now I'm going to declare this topic closed and lock the discussion.